1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document scanner with the capability of electronically imaging and scanning multiple forms of coded data from an ID card. More particularly, the invention pertains to an improved ID scanning device and method particularly useful for extracting an ID card that has jammed within the device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Subsequent to recent heightened security, government and private security measures have continued to increase worldwide. Consequently, there is a continued need for business and government security personnel to inspect the identification cards of employees and citizens to verify identity and to ascertain their authenticity and scope. Further, bars, nightclubs and liquor stores that serve alcohol risk hefty fines and loss of their liquor licenses should they serve alcohol or tobacco to underage customers. Because the risks are so high, both in terms of government security and government punishment, inspecting and validating customer identification cards has risen to critical importance.
However, with constant improvements in home computers and high definition color printers, forging and manufacturing false identification (ID) cards, passports, employment identification cards, and drivers' licenses and the like has become easier. A decade ago, an apparently authentic driver's license forgery could be crafted by cutting and pasting photographs onto a printed card before laminating the combination. Modern ID cards have many more authentication and security measures in place, but visually convincing forgeries can still be crafted with modern computers and printers and appropriate graphic software. Further however, while the forgery may appear genuine to the human eye, these impostors can still be quickly and easily identified with a proper ID scanner, analyzing the card under infrared (IR) or ultraviolet (UV) light.
As the technology to produce forgeries and the penalties for failing to identify fraudulent IDs both increase, there is an increasing demand on business owners, bar and liquor store owners, banks, and government employees such as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to quickly read, record, and authenticate a presented piece of identification. In the past decade, drivers' licenses have evolved to include many new types of security and authenticity factors which are imprinted directly onto the identification card. Examples include fluorescent inks, inks visible under only certain light spectra, hidden indicia in identification photos, printed bar codes, and magnetic strips which are encoded. Frequently a plurality of these security and authenticity measures are imprinted on either side of a driver's license or ID and can serve to validate that the ID is current and can authenticate the ID as validly issued rather than forged.
Nonetheless presently, most small businesses such as bars or restaurants do not have the personnel trained to quickly and accurately identify forgeries through comparison of imprinted authenticity and validity markers. Further, because the equipment to read and discern the various security features can often be both bulky and expensive, business and even government venues do not regularly employ them. Instead, businesses and government employees rely on the eye of a bouncer or gatekeeper at the restaurant or bar, and government relies on personnel such as a counter clerk or TSA agent, both of whom with little training and less equipment must try and spot forged identifications without the aid of variable light wavelengths and magnetic and optical strip readers and comparison of duplicate information on each.
One major impediment in imaging and detecting the authenticity and current validity of drivers' licenses and identification cards using conventional scanning machinery is the fact that they are stiff by nature due to their need for longevity. Most two sided document readers and imagers depend on running the document being scanned through a serpentine path in the device on a track through curves and ejecting it at the end of the serpentine path. While traversing this path, the card is optically viewed in a number of positions to try and image spectrum viewable security features for comparison. Being short and stiff, such cards are not well adapted to follow the conventional serpentine path required for imaging two sides. Further, such card readers tend to be very bulky due to the elaborate pathways the card must follow and the different multiple imaging stations along the path. Adding to the problem with such conventional imaging devices is that using multiple digital imaging chips (for example CCD's and CMOS-style) in one device can greatly increase the expense. Consequently employing two digital imaging chips to image both sides of a document doubles the cost. Additionally two independent image capturing components require a doubling of calibration, lighting, and the number of things that can malfunction in the device.
Accordingly, there is an unmet need for an imaging device that will scan both sides of either a flexible or relatively stiff identification card such as a driver's license or credit card style ID, which has a reduced size and footprint in use at such venues as an airport, bar, or company or government building point of entry. Such a device should provide for imaging of both sides of the card or document concurrently by a single electronic imaging device to thereby reduce costs and initial and ongoing calibration requirements. Such a device, due to the nature of people standing in lines and crowds where the identification is generally checked, and credit cards employed, should serve to increase speed through a checkpoint rather than slowing it as is the result with conventional devices. Further, such a device should eliminate the serpentine path for the document being checked and should provide the shortest and fastest path in and out of the device as is possible while achieving concurrent images of both sides of the document under a plurality of illumination spectrums required to image authenticity markings Still further, such a device should be especially well adapted to image both sides of a driver's license or ID card concurrently in a highly registered imaging between the two sides and to produce images that are easily readable and comparable on a video display for the user.
Because some user systems require information extracted from the machine-readable indicia as well as an image of the card, there is a need for a system capable of reading machine-readable indicia from an ID card as well as photographing the surface of the ID card in a single, compact package. The most convenient embodiment for checking modern ID cards would incorporate a magnetic strip reader alongside a digital camera. With this combination of coded indicia readers, a vendor or security personnel would be able to simply extract data from many ID cards, including any state driver's license issued in recent years.
Additionally, there is a benefit in scanning an ID card or document during multiple passes along an internal defined path. Different scanning devices could require different pass speeds and engaging certain scanners simultaneously could interfere with the quality provided by other scanners. For example, ID cards require a minimum pass velocity to energize a magnetic coil and read a magnetic strip, and this minimum magnetic strip velocity only narrowly overlaps with the maximum digital image capture velocity. Additionally, it would be impossible to simultaneously capture images of an ID card under multiple different lighting conditions, such as infrared, ultraviolet, and RGB (visible), as the sensor would pick up all of the reflected light rather than the specific desired frequency. It is possible to alternate two 2 frequencies of illumination during a single pass, but if more than two frequency captures are desired, an additional pass by the sensors could lower the illumination intensity or precise timing requirements. To allow optimal performance of all included scanners, more than one pass by the scanner assembly can be quite beneficial.
Also in light of the above, it is an additional object of the present invention to provide a device combining three popular machine-readable data options (e.g. magnetic strip, 2-D barcode, and RFID tags) and related variations, and further thereby providing an all-in-one peripheral for reading information from virtually any type of ID card, increasing both security and convenience in a smaller, cheaper package.
It is still further and object of the present invention to provide a scanning device and method with a particular configuration suited for retrieving a jammed document of identification (ID) card.